<title>fork function</title>
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<h1>fork function </h1>
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<b>fork</b> spawns a copy of the running process. The copy (or child) 
has a copy of the parent process stack, data area and heap and starts 
execution after the fork statement. fork is of use when you wish to 
write daemon processes.
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	Library:   unistd.h

	Prototype: pid_t fork(void);

	Syntax:    pid_t PID

                   PID = fork();
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On completion, PID will have one of the following values:

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 > 0 == the childs process ID.
   0 == is returned to the child process.
 < 0 == an error occoured. No child created, errno is set to 
        indicate the problem
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<h2>Examples:</h2>

<img src="../../GRAPHICS/computer.gif"><a href="../EXAMPLES/fork1.c"> example</a> 
program.

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<h2>See Also:</h2>

<img src="../../GRAPHICS/whiteball.gif">
<a href="pipe.html">pipe function.</a><p>

<img src="../../GRAPHICS/whiteball.gif">
<a href="execl.html">execl function.</a><p>

<img src="../../GRAPHICS/whiteball.gif">
<a href="../glossary.html#threads">threads</a><p>


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<address><a href="../../address.html">Martin Leslie</a> 
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